Reading Baseball Signs

Jimmy Piersall flies like a hawk into home plate

The seasons have changed but one last rite needs to be settled as we celebrate Halloween.

The World Series.

I cry because my black and orange Giants are not playing. The colors of Halloween. 

The 2020 World Champion Dodgers are done. No pretty blue colors in the Series this year. No Los Angeles celebrities in funny hats and shades behind home plate.

It’s the Braves and the Astros, Atlanta and Houston and who gives a damn.

This is a perfect time to fill our blank space — open base—with a story about my first baseball mitt, a three-fingered fielders glove, a signature Jimmy Piersall model.

It was one of my most prized possessions, made of brownish orange leather. I slipped my left hand inside and let my index finger rest on the back of the glove. That was the style, to add an extra degree of padding to the pocket, where the hardball would be caught.

I worked the pocket with my right fist, punching it over and over to make it pliable so the ball would stay in it.

I held my mitt up to my face and inhaled the warm smell of soft leather. I rubbed Linseed oil into the pocket to make it last. My mitt became a very personal part of me.

I played for Rod and Gun, a sporting goods store in Pomona that sponsored our team. Our uniforms were a grey flannel with dark pinstripes and a navy blue cap with an R on it. My number on the back was 9, which I happily discovered was the number that Ted Williams wore, maybe the best hitter ever to play the game, the last player to hit over .400 for a season.

But who was Jimmy Piersall?

I spent the summer with my mitt, slinging the wrist strap over the handle bars of my bicycle when I traveled. Every Saturday there was a baseball game broadcast on TV and I happened to be watching when Ted Williams, playing for the Boston Red Sox, stepped up the to the plate against the Cleveland Indians pitcher.

“Look at Piersall,” said the TV broadcaster, calling attention to centerfield, where the camera lens focussed in. It was my first chance to see him. In an attempt to distract Williams, Jimmy Piersall was running around in centerfield with his arms raised performing a war dance. He was ejected for breaking the rule of intentionally distracting the batter.

JP was a good player but he did odd things on the field. I learned much later that he was diagnosed by today's parlance as having bipolar disorder. A 1957 film, Fear Strikes Out, was released, based on his memoir of the same title.  Anthony Perkins, who played the infamous Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, was cast as Jimmy Piersall.

Because of my beloved baseball mitt, I felt a weird compassion and kinship with Piersall, who played 17 seasons in the Majors, and doubtless exposed the issue of mental illness to a national audience.

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Near our LL field, there was a Tastee Freeze soft-serve ice cream joint. Following some games our coach, Mr. McCaskill, would treat us to ice cream cones. We’d all run across the field and jump over the fence to get there in a hurry. 

I learned from a story in today’s New York Times that the Atlanta Braves have relied on a secret weapon that has lifted their spirits during this pandemic-plagued season. That weapon: a soft serve ice cream maker in their clubhouse. This was the feel-good baseball story I was waiting for, a sign and connection.

I’m rooting for the Braves in this World Series.